This study examined if and how male survivors' personal meanings of masculinity influenced the impact of childhood sexual abuse. Gender was defined as the individual male survivor's personal construction of masculinity within the context of the sociocultural construction of traditional masculinity. Six men participated in in-depth unstructured interviews. Data analysis of the verbatim transcriptions of the interviews was guided by qualitative methods associated with a constructivist paradigm. All men reported numerous long-term effects similar to those reported by female survivors with no clear relation to gender. Results, however, also suggested that variations in male survivors' personal meanings of masculinity were associated with different outcomes. Male survivors who held personal constructions of masculinity as more traditional reported disturbances in their sense of self as masculine and their sexuality as males. Male survivors who held less traditional personal constructions of masculinity reported fewer or no difficulties in these areas. The results of this study challenge theoretical models on male victimization that propose restrictive male responses to trauma, and highlight the importance of taking into account the individual male survivor's personal meaning of masculinity for a more complete understanding of the impact of sexual abuse.

This dissertation intends to study the haunting power of the past¡Xthe legacy of slavery and the trauma of racism¡Xon the lives of African Americans in Toni Morrison fiction. In this dissertation, I attempt to examine how the aftermaths of historical and individual trauma affect the formation of ethnic identity and black subjectivity, how the traumatic history is haunting across generations, how the memory of the traumatic past is mediated and imaginatively portrayed through fictional characters and in what ways those characters respond to racism and imposed shame. Based on the theories of trauma, I view African American history as a prolonged history of trauma which haunts generations of blacks. The impact of the past is always present in a variety of ways. Among Morrison¡¦s fiction, I will only choose four of her novels as my major concern to elaborate the fundamental issues that Morrison consistently highlights. The first chapter attempts to investigate aesthetics, ethics and black female subjectivity in Morrison¡¦s The Bluest Eye and Beloved. In the novels, Morrison discloses the racist biases of white aesthetics, as well as its damaging impacts on reshaping the subjectivity of black women. For Morrison, the aesthetic judgment is inseparable from ethics. The second chapter tackles the problematic of racial haunting and the possibilities of working through historical trauma in Beloved. The writing of Beloved not only serves as a reminder as well as a symptom of historical trauma but also offers a way to heal collectively historical trauma. The third chapter is concerned with the issue of postmemory and the crisis of fatherhood in Song of Solomon. The main protagonist, Milkman, still has to work through the multi-ethnic past of his family which, though not directly his, yet haunts him nonetheless. Morrison emphasizes the need for African Americans to forge productive links between past and present. Unless Milkman confronts his past, both personal and collective, he will not know how to appreciate the beauty and power of African-American cultural heritage. The fourth chapter engages with the problematic of black manhood and black nationalism in Paradise. In this chapter, I endeavor to explore how the wounded black manhood is formed in response and in reaction to the historical oppressions of black men as a whole. Set in the sixties and seventies of America, Paradise is a critique to the biased gender politics of black nationalism at that time. It reveals Morrison¡¦s persistent concern with the plight of black men and the continuous victimization of black women.

This thesis investigates 1st-2nd century CE biographer and philosopher, Plutarch's, manipulation and construction of gender ideals in three sets of his Parallel Lives, Coriolanus and Alcibiades, Pelopidas and Marcellus, and Phocion and Cato the Younger in which he presented his particular version of the ideal man and route to manhood. Plutarch discouraged traditional paths to gaining masculine status and simultaneously promoted a type of masculinity that benefited other aspects of his identity, particularly promoting his social and economic position and ethnicity. He asserted throughout that martial men were not in control of their emotions and therefore were incomplete men. Plutarch then promoted the study of Hellenic education, or paideia, and philosophy as the route to ideal manhood. This sub-discourse served as a reaction to Roman rule and the position of Greek men in the Roman Empire. Although Plutarch wrote centuries after the Roman annexation of Greece, he and his contemporaries continued to negotiate and redefine the complex power relations that existed between Greece and Rome. Living and writing at the beginning of the Second Sophistic (60-230 CE), Plutarch's work reflects a wider phenomenon that was occurring within Greece between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE. This study is therefore multi-layered, investigating not only how gender ideology is constructed and redefined but also how it can be manipulated to suit social and political circumstances in order to participate in discourses about identity, authority and power.

“American Impotence” investigates a continuity between literary representations of masculinity and considerations of national identity in the works of five postwar novelists. In particular, I illustrate the manner in which Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, John Updike’s Couples, Robert Coover’s The Public Burning, Joan Didion’s Democracy and The Last Thing He Wanted, and Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho challenge the patterns of daily life through which a single figure is imagined to be the essential agent of American polity: namely, the self-made individualist, characterized by manly virtues like dominance, aggression, ambition, mastery, vitality, and virility. More specifically, this project examines the manner in which the iconicity of men helps sustain a narrative of “imperilled masculinity” that at once privileges an impossible identity, situated in the representative nucleus of postwar democracy, and forecloses other modalities of political life. Observing the full meaning of the word “potency,” I elucidate the interrelationships between narrative forms, masculine norms, and democratic practice. Ellison’s work ties the maturation of African American boys to the impossibility of full participation in civic life, for instance, while in Updike’s Couples the contradictions of virile manhood manifest in the form of a fatalism that threatens to undo the carefully cultivated social boundaries of early sixties bohemianism; in a variety of ways, The Public Burning and American Psycho represent the iconic nature of masculinity as a psychic threat to those men closest to it, while Didion’s female protagonists find themselves flirting with the promises of a secret agency linked to imperial adventures in Southeast Asia and Central America. In the cultural context of the Cold War, these novelists demonstrate how intensified participation in national fantasies of potency and virility is inevitably disempowering; as an alternative, this dissertation seeks to consider impotence as dissensus detached from the mandates of hegemonic masculinity.

“American Impotence” investigates a continuity between literary representations of masculinity and considerations of national identity in the works of five postwar novelists. In particular, I illustrate the manner in which Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, John Updike’s Couples, Robert Coover’s The Public Burning, Joan Didion’s Democracy and The Last Thing He Wanted, and Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho challenge the patterns of daily life through which a single figure is imagined to be the essential agent of American polity: namely, the self-made individualist, characterized by manly virtues like dominance, aggression, ambition, mastery, vitality, and virility. More specifically, this project examines the manner in which the iconicity of men helps sustain a narrative of “imperilled masculinity” that at once privileges an impossible identity, situated in the representative nucleus of postwar democracy, and forecloses other modalities of political life. Observing the full meaning of the word “potency,” I elucidate the interrelationships between narrative forms, masculine norms, and democratic practice. Ellison’s work ties the maturation of African American boys to the impossibility of full participation in civic life, for instance, while in Updike’s Couples the contradictions of virile manhood manifest in the form of a fatalism that threatens to undo the carefully cultivated social boundaries of early sixties bohemianism; in a variety of ways, The Public Burning and American Psycho represent the iconic nature of masculinity as a psychic threat to those men closest to it, while Didion’s female protagonists find themselves flirting with the promises of a secret agency linked to imperial adventures in Southeast Asia and Central America. In the cultural context of the Cold War, these novelists demonstrate how intensified participation in national fantasies of potency and virility is inevitably disempowering; as an alternative, this dissertation seeks to consider impotence as dissensus detached from the mandates of hegemonic masculinity.

Critics of animal rights often deride the movement’s proponents for having a sentimental, juvenile misconception of what animals really are, an argument bolstered by the fact that few twenty-first-century Americans besides those engaged in the industries of animal exploitation have any prolonged contact with real animals other than their pets. Until the first decades of the twentieth century, however, American cities teemed with diverse animal residents and workers, and a rapidly increasing percentage of humans grew in their conviction that these animal neighbors should be extended considerations and rights. Shifting ideas about these animals’ roles within United States society were captured in a number of new bestselling literary genres centered around “realistic” depictions of animal characters. Because animals are often conceptualized as a “contrast class” to humanity—a fundamental “Other” by which humans establish what qualities make themselves distinct and (typically) superior—analyzing these texts and their circulation within nineteenth-century culture reveals how Americans understood authority and systems of governance, and in particular how they modeled an ideal American manhood nourished by animal bodies. What forms of exploitation and control were permissible in a man’s treatment of his animals often reflected other power dynamics within society, and so these texts also provide insight into issues of class, race, and gender. Although the historical trajectory of popular culture depictions of realistic animals shows a general increase in compassion, egalitarianism, and the extension of rights, the successful removal of much animal exploitation from visibility has allowed that exploitation to grow in spite of the increasing popular sentiment to the contrary. / English

This study examines the African-American author Ernest Gaines's three works The Sky is Gray, In My Father's House, and A Lesson before Dying as examples of oppressed manhood, and the gradual acceptance of the characteristics of manhood in Black males. Chapter One focuses on The Sky Is Gray and follows the young hero as he makes his transition from child to a young man understanding manhood. The second chapter looks at In My Father's House, exploring the relationship between father and son. Due to his father's abandonment, the son never learns what it means to be a man. However, at the same time his son is struggling to discover his manhood, the father finally becomes a man. Finally, chapter three centers on A Lesson before Dying, showing two males can learn manhood from each other. Although both are oppressed, together they achieve the manhood that is being robbed from them.

No description available.

No description available.

This MA thesis deals with the masculine identity of the three main male characters of Chuck Palahniuk's early novels Fight Club, Survivor and Choke. It consists of two parts. The first theoretical part briefly explores anthropological and sociological notions of masculinity, with the focus on the manhood in the contemporary USA. As such it serves as the theoretical basis for the second part of literary interpretation. There the masculine identity of the three main characters is discussed. As all the three characters experience the same development of masculine identity, the interpretation advances along this progress. Its stages are identity crisis, turning to the traditional male strategies, rejecting those strategies and searching the basis of one's identity in a personal relationship.